1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to beds and more specifically, to a bed configured to oscillate in three dimensions with or without seesawing motion.
2. Description of Related Art
A large portion of people complain that they have to lie down on a bed for a long time before they fall asleep; that they can not fall asleep again after they wake up during the night; or that they wake up early and can not fall asleep again in the early morning. In addition, many people suffer from insomnia or other sleep problems caused by physical or mental diseases. According to statistics, one fourth of the population suffers from insomnia; in adults over 76 years old, 29% of men and 37% of women have sleep problems. Drugs used for insomnia have certain limitations because of their side effects, which inhibit the action of the central nervous system for a certain period of time and can therefore affect a person's life quality. Moreover, there are considerations of drug-dependence that must be considered.
It is obvious that sleep is vitally important for human physical and mental health and therefore the sleep mechanism is an issue that is worth exploring and continuing to explore. Experiments involving lack of sleep suggest that sleep allows the body to rest and repair itself. Therefore, a new and effective hypnotherapy technology would be highly desirable.
The effect of some of the so-called hypnotherapies is questionable. One example is music hypnotherapy that relies on an aural stimulus, which only acts on the cochlear nerves and locally stimulates the certain cerebral cortex and the stimuli is excitative to the brain. Some special beds have been used in hospitals that have a special mattress and bed skeleton. However, the function of the bed is not mainly to treat insomnia but mainly to prevent patients who are unconscious or who have difficulty changing their posture from bedsores and pneumonia.
Traditional understanding of sleep in humans assumes that the quietness of the environment is an important factor. In conjunction with this assumption, it is the belief that a generally steady sleep surface is beneficial. However, this is an issue that merits further consideration. Actually a proper form and quantity of movement is an effective stimulation for promoting sleep and maintaining sleep based on the following existences. One example which I call cradle effect is a child being rocked in a cradle or rocked by a parent in the parent's arms. Another example which I call trip effect is when people fall asleep while traveling by a carriage, car, ship or train. The third example is that sleepiness caused by vehicle jolt is a major cause of serious traffic accidents proved by traffic accident surveys (Department of Human Science, Loughborough University Tel: +44-1509-223091) which belongs to the scope of the trip effect. In addition, generally, people change their posture a few times after they lie down and before they fall asleep.
Vestibular organs including the utricle, the saccule and the semicircular canals are traditionally understood as balance sense organs that are involved in evaluating the position of the head relative to gravity, liner acceleration or deceleration, and the movement of the head. Vestibular organs function to make human to sense posture, position and movement to maintain body balance. However, based on the above explanations, the vestibular organs are also sleep organs.
Based on study of sleep history, exquisite observation of human life and continuous exploration of sleep mechanism, applicant thinks that sleep mechanism consists of two contents that we may call sub-mechanisms: (1)the sleep initiation mechanism and (2)the sleep maintenance mechanism. Sleep occurrence is a process of a consciousness state entering a sleep (we call none or very low level consciousness) state and is triggered by the sleep initiation mechanism. Sleep occurrence depends on conditions both from outside and inside of the body. That is, both the environment and some organs of the body contribute the sleep initiation. As such, sleep occurrence is a conditioned reflex. Generally, the sleep maintenance mechanism is a natural, cerebral function program that is procedurally controlled by the brain although it is affected by conditions from inside and outside the body at a certain degree.
A factor affecting sleep initiation is motion sensed by the body. The proper motion is a motion that simultaneously satisfies two conditions: (1) quality: proper motion form that continuously stimulates vestibular organs—there are two motion forms: rhythmic and rhythm-less; (2) quantity: proper motion intensity that will not cause muscles, especially extremity muscles, to contract in an attempt to maintain body balance and will not cause excessive reaction of parasympathetic excitation. The proper motion gives appropriate stimuli to vestibular organs thereby promoting the occurrence of sleep.
Based on the foregoing information, I have established a theory about the mechanism of sleep occurrence. The content of the theory includes: sleep occurrence is a conditioned reflex relying on the vestibular organs; the vestibular organs are sleep sense organs that include the utricle, the saccule and the semicircular canals; and the brainstem and basal forebrain form the sleep center. Proper motion stimulates the vestibular organs; the hair cells of the vestibular organs are activated and create action potential which is a sleep signal; the sleep signal is transferred to a sleep center in the brainstem and the basal forebrain via the afferent neuron tract of vestibular nerve nucleus; the neurons of the sleep center are activated and sleep onset is triggered. Besides the above, vestibular nerve broadly connects with other structures, such as vagus nerve nucleus, which may provide more benefit for sleep and for human' health.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a new method that moves in such a manner as to act on the sleep initiation mechanism and the sleep maintenance mechanism by proper stimulation of the vestibular organs and promote sleep initiation and help sleep maintenance